Vietnam has a rich history of fighting for its independence. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. This history is reflected in the the campus of a local university. The architecture is a mixture of French and Asian, with heavy Chinese influence. The campus is “decorated” with military equipment from what they call the “American War.”
Military gear in the foreground, traditional architecture in the distance.
I don’t think that this is an appealing name for a supermarket, do you?
I’ve heard of this stuff before, but it never appealed to me. This coffee is supposed to be excellent. But I’ll never know. Apparently, if you feed coffee cherries to a certain type of weasel, it will poop out the seed (which is what we call a coffee “bean”). The procedure is to roast and grind up the pooped-out coffee beans (I’d like to believe that they scrape off the weasel poop first, but I’m making no assumptions).
No thanks.
According to a Wikipedia page, this stuff is 5 time more expensive than un-pooped coffee.
Whatever.
I did a little research, and discovered that Vietnam has many farms where they feed caged weasels coffee cherries, collect the poop, and sell it.
Oh, great.
As you can imagine, there are also some animal welfare concerns. There are accusations about force-feeding weasels. The web page of one company that sells weasel poop coffee (http://www.huongmaicafe.com/blogs/vietnam-weasel-coffee/) seems defensive, almost aggressively defensive. Here’s a quote from the site:
“This is not cruel, this is so so so not cruel, don’t judging 3rd world countries like a savage and uncivilized tribe, or I will have to call you Jon Snow. “
I try to avoid the whole Jon Snow comparison altogether and just not drink the stuff. Today at the grocery store, though, I saw it for sale:
Weasel poop coffee! Get your weasel poop coffee here!
The price of the stuff is nowhere near 5x the price of poopless coffee, which makes me suspect that this is not the real stuff. Or real “shit.” I can say that, right, since that’s what we’re talking about?
You can even get a fancy gift box! Also, I love the Vietnamese flag planted in the middle of the cup of coffee.
There is enough variety of coffee here in Vietnam. I don’t need to try coffee that is made up of ground-up poop. I’ll avoid it, regardless of the exhortation of the weasel-poop website:
“Why don’t you just simply enjoy your cup of Weasel coffee?”
I think I’ll stick to regular coffee. Thanks, but no thanks.
It’s a modern(izing) city. Taken from a rooftop bar on the 24th floor, overlooking downtown. Hard to believe this was a battlefield 40 years ago.
A picture on the fence at a construction site in Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese reads: “You will be fired if you fight with each other on the work site.”
There’s a tiny restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City called “The Hungry Pig.” If bacon plays an important role in your life, then I can recommend this place to you.
Before
After. Tummy so happy.
Just in case you’re nervous about watching a video clip of two pedestrians crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City, I can assure you that they made it across safely.
But this is what we have to do in order to cross the street. It’s nerve-wracking at first, then you get used to it.
I am a firm believer in American education. I’m a product of the American educational system myself, of course, and in addition to that, I worked in the system for 20+ years. I got interested in the Foreign Service through my experience as a Fulbright scholar. One of the reasons that I wanted to join the Foreign Service is because of all that we do with promoting U.S. educational opportunities for students from other countries.
There’s a constant stream of students from other countries to learn in America. Our educational system, like our culture, is very attractive to foreign students. Even though it isn’t perfect (what is, after all?), America’s educational system enjoys a strong reputation internationally. The huge influx of international students to American high schools, colleges and universities is impressive and inspiring.
So when I was asked to represent the U.S. Consulate at a graduation ceremony of a U.S. university’s program in Vietnam, I jumped at the chance.
Before the event began, I got to schmooze with some people.
Exchanging business cards in the digital age, using our smartphones.
The ceremony got off to an impressive start. A troupe of local dancers opened the ceremony with an eye-popping performance. This video is just a little snippet:
I got to say a few words on behalf of the Consulate in congratulating the graduates and the graduate program.
Unfortunately for the attendees, the big screen showed everyone exactly what I look like close up.
Someone once said that America is its own best advertisement. This morning I met some really excellent people who are ambitious and optimistic about the future of their country. They chose to invest in their future by pursuing an education at an American university. I’m proud that they benefited from an American graduate education.
How I’m sure the world sees me. I’m at peace with it.
OK, so I know that I’m a nerd, on many, many levels. So I understand if no one but me finds this interesting. I also accept your condescension and scorn. I’m used to it. Believe me.
I found out today that my new Vietnamese teacher is doing his Ph.D. in linguistics. Better yet, his specialization is phonetics. I have a strong interest in phonology, and so I took the opportunity to ask some burning questions about Vietnamese phonology that have been bothering me for months. We spent the lesson talking about linguistics (in Vietnamese).
Did I mention that I’m a nerd?
I showed him an analysis that I made of some Vietnamese language phonological rules regarding pronunciation. At the time, I wasn’t sure that my analysis was correct, and I couldn’t get verification. The teachers at FSI, as excellent as they are at teaching Vietnamese, do not have a background in theoretical linguistics. I tried not to hold that against them. Nobody’s perfect.
Anyway, he said that my analysis about a rounding rule is correct. The linguistics nerd in me rejoiced. The (very small) non-nerd part of me cringed in embarrassment at my nerdish delight.
Big flower wreaths like this have been showing up at the Consulate all week. They’re from local government and business organizations, congratulating the U.S.A. on its national day. They are being displayed all over the Consulate.
